HOME PAGE: http://putinfreakshow.blogspot.com/
MOST IMPORTANT ARTICLES AND DOCUMENTS:
http://putinfreakshow.blogspot.com/2006/12/most-important-articles-and-documents.html
Here are the articles that make the connection:
South Ossetia, Abkhazia get pact
19/09/2008
MOSCOW (RIA Novosti) - Russia signed friendship and cooperation treaties with South Ossetia and Abkhazia on Wednesday, promising them military and economic support.
Russia recognized the breakaway Georgian regions as independent states last month after a brief armed conflict with Georgia, which attacked South Ossetia on August 8.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed the documents with Abkhaz President Sergei Bagapsh and South Ossetian President Eduard Kokoity in the Kremlin.
Medvedev said after the signing ceremony that Russia will not permit any new Georgian acts of aggression against Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and is ready to intervene militarily.
"No one should be in any doubt - we will not permit new reckless military acts," he said.
Under the treaties, Russia has pledged to help the two republics to protect their borders, and their signatories have granted each other the right to set up military bases in their respective territories.
The treaties also formalized economic cooperation between Russia and the republics, and allowed dual citizenship for Russian, Abkhaz and South Ossetian residents. Russia agreed to unify its transportation, energy, and communications infrastructure with the two republics.
"The sides will be striving for the highest level of economic integration and will actively develop trade and economic cooperation, taking measures to unify energy and transportation systems as well as systems of communication and telecommunication," the treaties said.
South Ossetia and Abkhazia have so far only been recognized by Russia and Nicaragua. Belarus has pledged to follow suit in the near future, and Venezuela has voiced support for Russia's recognition of the two republics.
The two republics broke away from Georgia following the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s through wars that claimed thousands of lives.
Bagapsh said Abkhazia and South Ossetia plan to apply for membership in the Russia-Belarus Union State and the Collective Security Treaty Organization. "We will send membership applications to these structures and we hope they will be accepted," he said.
http://mnweekly.ru/news/20080919/55347589.html
Olmert quits - Livni seeks coalition in Israel
(09-22) 04:00 PDT Jerusalem --
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert resigned Sunday, brought down by a string of corruption probes, while Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni struggled to assemble a coalition that would allow her to succeed him without facing new elections.
Olmert had promised this summer to step down as soon as a new leader for his party, Kadima, could be chosen. Livni narrowly won that vote last week, and on Sunday, Olmert submitted a letter to President Shimon Peres that formally sets in motion the process of choosing a successor. Livni has already begun meeting with politicians from rival parties, trying to build a majority in the 120-member Knesset, or parliament.
Olmert's coalition had dwindled over the past year, and most analysts say Livni faces a challenge gathering the support she needs to govern. If she does not succeed within six weeks, Israel probably will have to hold general elections in early 2009. Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of the opposition Likud party, is the current favorite in that race, with Livni close behind.
The fate of U.S.-backed peace talks initiated under Olmert could be at stake. Livni has been Israel's primary negotiator and has pledged to continue the discussions if she assumes power, but Netanyahu has been a staunch critic of the talks.
By submitting his resignation Sunday, Olmert becomes the caretaker prime minister until a new government can be formed.
The end of his tenure comes nearly three years after then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon suffered a stroke, thrusting his deputy, Olmert, into power. Olmert was later elected to a full term, scheduled to end in 2010.
He led Israel through an inconclusive but damaging war with the Lebanese movement Hezbollah in summer 2006. Last year, he relaunched long-dormant peace talks with the Palestinians. But despite great fanfare at the kickoff ceremony in Annapolis, Md., in October, the negotiations have appeared to gain little traction.
Olmert, the former mayor of Jerusalem, also was dogged throughout his tenure as premier by allegations of corruption. New accusations surfaced in the spring, when New York businessman Morris Talansky told investigators he had given Olmert more than $150,000 over the years, much of it in cash-stuffed envelopes. Investigators later found evidence that Olmert had double-billed charities and government agencies for plane flights and hotel stays.
The police recommended on Sept. 14 that Olmert be indicted on charges of bribery, breach of public trust, money laundering and fraudulent receipt of goods. Prosecutors have not said whether they plan to follow through with the case.
Even if Olmert is not indicted, political analysts say his tenure will not be remembered fondly by most Israelis, who see him as emblematic of a generation of politicians who appear to care more about personal profit than public service.
"The legacy of Olmert is corruption," said Yaron Ezrahi, a political scientist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/09/22/MNPO13287S.DTL
At least 53 killed in hotel blast in Pakistan
18:56
21/ 09/ 2008
ISLAMABAD, September 21 (RIA Novosti) - At least 53 people were killed and another 226 injured in a suicide bomb attack on the Marriott hotel in Pakistan's capital on Saturday, Pakistani officials said on Sunday.
A suicide truck bomber attacked the Marriott hotel, a place favored by foreigners, on Saturday evening, starting a fire that swept through the building. The attack occurred just hours after Pakistan's new President Asif Ali Zardari pledged tough measures to root out terrorism.
The Czech ambassador to Pakistan, Ivo Zdarek, was among several foreigners who died in the deadly attack, Pakistani officials said.
The blast destroyed the entire front section of the hotel and left a crater of up to 6 meters (20 feet) in front of the hotel's gates.
No organization has yet claimed responsibility for the deadly blast. However, Pakistan's Interior Ministry blamed Al-Qaeda-linked Taliban militants for the hotel bombing.
http://en.rian.ru/world/20080921/117003915.html
Bhutto's widower Zardari sworn in as Pakistan's president
13:46
09/ 09/ 2008
MOSCOW, September 9 (RIA Novosti) - Asif Ali Zardari, the widower of assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, was sworn in as Pakistan's president on Tuesday.
The new leader faces intense pressure to tackle rising Islamist extremism and deep economic troubles.
Zardari, 53, was sworn in by the country's top judge at a ceremony in the presidential palace, broadcast on national TV.
The ceremony was attended by Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who has criticized Pakistan for failing to bring Taliban militants based near the Afghan border under control.
Zardari won a parliamentary vote on Saturday, and replaces former army general Pervez Musharraf, who resigned as president on August 18 to avoid impeachment by the ruling government coalition.
Zardari's Pakistan People's party had led the coalition to victory in the February election.
The new leader, whose wife was shot dead in December 2007 during a campaign rally in Rawalpindi, has said he also expects to be targeted by extremists.
He is due to give a news conference later on Tuesday.
http://en.rian.ru/world/20080909/116639150.html
Monday, September 22, 2008
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Large Hadron Collider - The Modern Bin Laden
HOME PAGE: http://putinfreakshow.blogspot.com/
MOST IMPORTANT ARTICLES AND DOCUMENTS:
http://putinfreakshow.blogspot.com/2006/12/most-important-articles-and-documents.html
Everybody heard of the Large Hadron Collider experiment, made today, 10-th of September 2008.
Details in Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Hadron_Collider
First of all, it is needless to point out the striking coincidence: The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiment was launched quite on 10-th of September, while America was commemorating 7 years from the 9-11 terrorist attacks.
Following a logical train of thoughts, it looks like someone out there wanted to distract the attention of the crowds from the 9-11 events, towards the scary machine.
Certainly if this kind of experiment was going to be done for real, it would've been done quietly, not on a populated continent like Europe, but rather deep inside the oceans or at the frozen poles.
Just like the famous American journey on the Moon and the 9-11 "terrorist" demolition of the New York twin towers, the "Large Hadron Collider" (LHC) experiment has been aired "live" on the TV channels of the World.
Quoting from RIA Novosti, what was presented as happening today is just a test prior to the inauguration of the "destructive" machine which might "give rise to a chain reaction that could destroy our planet".
RIA NOVOSTI:
"The collider is to be inaugurated on October 21," said Alexander Vodopyanov, of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (Dubna)."This means at least one test-run of proton beams around the accelerator ring will be conducted prior to inauguration."
http://en.rian.ru/world/20080805/115771418.html
This statement reads that LHC is not just an isolated experiment, but rather a long term project.
But whether or not the Large Hadron Collider device exists physically is just a figure of speech, as long as its sole purpose is a propagandistic one.
Many have long complained about the reckless universal policy, by which climate change is ignored and even encouraged due to the lack of legislation which could help reduce gas emissions.
Others are concerned with the near future of humanity, when fossil fuels will be just good memories.
In order to soothe these concerns, the global political thinkers of the planet haven't considered for a single moment thinking of a concrete program for reducing the waste of the non-renewable fuels, but they opted instead for improving the image of the old-fashioned Bin Laden.
The image of "terror" has therefore been switched from the bearded man with the stick (Bin Laden) to the complicated tubular machinery called "The Large Hadron Collider".
This big step further in the lie fabrication industry proves that the political thinkers of the planet have finally grasped that while almost every person has easy access to relatively high technology such as a mobile phone or a web camera nowadays, the image of the bearded man with the stick who terrorises the whole planet with his bare hands is severely running out of both time and credibility.
Hence, pressed by the public requests to update this scenario, the political scenarists wrote "The Large Hadron Collider" - a novel meant to divert people's attention from the real problems which aren't scheduled being ever solved, but rather disguised and hidden from the public eye.
Due to the freshly launched story of the miraculous device, the shortage of the non-renewable fuels will fall on the second place on common people's list of global concerns, while the blame for the climate change will be switched from the exponential consume of fossil fuels, upon the monstruous device. Never mind the commemoration of the 9-11 victims, date when people will rather "commemorate" the test of the "destructive machine".
The consequences of this alleged "experiment" are indeed unpredictable, but not in the hilarious sense that a black hole will swallow the whole Universe.
The purpose of the LHC story might be just to shadow the 9-11 events and to diminish their importance on each 9-11 September, the top secret device might slowly become the main official blame for the climate change, or it might become a a pretext for actually launching incognito strikes, nuclear or of any other nature.
Although its purpose seems to be rather to distract people's attention from the climate change than to be used as a pretext for launching preemptive strikes, my prediction is that the concept of terrorism will be slowly left aside and, in time, it will be replaced with the "LHC" concept.
=============================================================
UPDATES:
I was apparently wrong separating Bin Laden from the LHC, but the image that I have attached seems to be correct. No, the notion of "terrorists" won't disappear. It will be BIN LADEN who will screw up the LHC and who will cause the "black hole" which will cause in its turn the intensification of the global warming.
The weakness in this terrorist-LHC joint venture is that very few believe in Bin Laden anymore.
If it will cross politicians' mind to say that Bin Laden attacked the LHC, there will be three groups of people:
1. One who believes in Bin Laden and believes also in LHC, who will swallow every lies.
2. One who believes in LHC but doesn't believe in Bin Laden anymore and who will accuse politicians of claiming that LHC is screwed and who will say that it was screwed from the very beginning and that now politicians want to hide this by blaming the unsuccess of the LHC experiment on terrorists.
3. And one who doesn't believe in both Bin Laden and the LHC and who will say that everything was staged from the very beginning, that there's no LHC actually and that everything that is being sold to us as LHC is pure distraction from the realities of this planet such as global warming.
Just look what a silly page they sell us, babbling about computers hacking and such:
ARTICLES:
TELEGRAPH.UK:
Hackers infiltrate Large Hadron Collider systems and mock IT security
Last Updated: 4:01pm BST 12/09/2008
Hackers have mounted an attack on the Large Hadron Collider, raising concerns about the security of the biggest experiment in the world. By Roger Highfield.
As the first particles were circulating in the machine near Geneva where the world wide web was born, a Greek group hacked into the facility, posting a warning about weaknesses in its infrastructure.
Calling themselves the Greek Security Team, the interlopers mocked the IT used on the project, describing the technicians responsible for security as "a bunch of schoolkids."However, despite an ominous warning "don't mess with us," the hackers said they had no intention of disrupting the work of the atom smasher.
"We're pulling your pants down because we don't want to see you running around naked looking to hide yourselves when the panic comes," they wrote in Greek in a rambling note posted on the LHC's network.
The scientists behind the £4.4 billion "Big Bang" machine had already received threatening emails and been besieged by telephone calls from worried members of the public concerned by speculation that the machine could trigger a black hole to swallow the earth, or earthquakes and tsunamis, despite endless reassurances to the contrary from the likes of Prof Stephen Hawking.
The website - http://www.cmsmon.cern.ch/
- can no longer be accessed by the public as a result of the attack.
Scientists working at Cern, the organisation that runs the vast smasher, were worried about what the hackers could do because they were "one step away" from the computer control system of one of the huge detectors of the machine, a vast magnet that weighs 12500 tons, measuring around 21 metres in length and 15 metres wide/high.
If they had hacked into a second computer network, they could have turned off parts of the vast detector and, said the insider, "it is hard enough to make these things work if no one is messing with it."
Fortunately, only one file was damaged but one of the scientists firing off emails as the CMS team fought off the hackers said it was a "scary experience".
The hackers targeted the Compact Muon Solenoid Experiment, or CMS, one of the four "eyes" of the facility that will be analysing the fallout of the Big Bang.
The CMS team of around 2000 scientists is racing with another team that runs the Atlas detector, also at Cern, to find the Higgs particle, one that is responsible for mass.
"There seems to be no harm done. From what they can tell, it was someone making the point that CMS was hackable," said James Gillies, spokesman for Cern. "It was quickly detected."
"We have several levels of network, a general access network and a much tighter network for sensitive things that operate the LHC," said Gillies.
"We are a very visible site," he said, adding that of the 1.4 million emails sent to Cern yesterday, 98 per cent was spam.
The hacking attempt started around the time that the giant machine was about to circulate its first particles, under the spotlight of the world's media.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/09/12/scicern312.xml&page=3
TIMES ONLINE:
Hackers claim there’s a black hole in the atom smashers’ computer network
September 13, 2008
Hackers have broken into one of the computer networks of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).
A group calling itself the Greek Security Team left a rogue webpage describing the technicians responsible for computer security at the giant atom smasher as “schoolkids” — but reassuring scientists that they did not want to disrupt the experiment.
The hackers gained access to a website open to other scientists on Wednesday as the LHC passed its first test, sending its protons off on their dizzying journey through time and space, close to the speed of light.
The work of the scientists was not derailed and insiders scoffed at claims that the hackers were “one step away” from the systems controlling the experiment itself. The engineering team completed four days of scheduled work in the first 24 hours but what physicists are really waiting for is the big bang machine’s first collisions.
Apart from being wide of the mark from a scientific point of view, fears that the LHC might bring the world to an end this week were in any case premature because it was never going to smash any particles so early on.
This week’s successful start-up means that that should now happen sooner than expected, perhaps as early as the first week in October.
Doomsayers take note: there is still a slim chance that a microscopic (and harmless) black hole will be created, but only once the accelerator starts colliding protons together at close to its maximum energy.
The hackers appear to have targeted the computer system of the Compact Muon Solenoid Experiment, one of the four detectors that will be analysing the progress of the experiment.
James Gillies, a spokesman for CERN, the European Laboratory for Network Collision, home of the LHC, said: “We don’t know who they were but there seems to be no harm done. It appears to be people who want to make a point that CERN was hackable,” he added.
CERN officials are now confident that the collider will have started experiments to generate new physics well before world leaders visit on October 21 to inaugurate the project.
Many countries will send their heads of state or government to the event: President Sarkozy of France, President Couchepin of Switzerland and President Köhler of Germany have the date in their diaries, and either President Medvedev of Russia or Vladimir Putin may attend.
The British Prime Minister, however, has apparently decided to skip the opportunity to be publicly associated with black holes.
Responding to a query about whether Gordon Brown would be there to celebrate the passing of the Apocalypse, Downing Street told The Times “to call back nearer the time”.
Describing the CERN team’s progress, Mr Gillies said: “There is a 31-day schedule before the first high-energy collisions, and on Wednesday they did Days 1 to 4.”
On Wednesday night, one beam was circulated around the LHC’s ring about 300 times, and on Thursday, the anti-clockwise beam was fired around the accelerator for half an hour so it could be “captured” and made to travel in neat, compact pulses.
Protons make about 11,000 laps per second, which means 20 million circuits have been achieved. The next crucial step is likely next week, when the captured beams will be fired in opposite directions, and crashed into each other inside the four huge detectors.
A couple of weeks later is the real moment of truth.
The LHC’s superconducting magnets will be fired up to 70 per cent of maximum power, producing proton beams with an energy of 5 teraelectronvolts (TeV) — 5,000 billion electrovolts — and crashing them together.
“That’s where the new physics starts,” Dr Gillies said. It is possible that scientists will start accumulating the evidence that could prove supersymmetry, the hypothesis that all particles have a twin.
The plan next year is to ramp it up to its maximum energy of 7TeV. The accelerator will then be providing results that should shed light on some of the central questions in physics.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article4744329.ece
MOST IMPORTANT ARTICLES AND DOCUMENTS:
http://putinfreakshow.blogspot.com/2006/12/most-important-articles-and-documents.html
Everybody heard of the Large Hadron Collider experiment, made today, 10-th of September 2008.
Details in Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Hadron_Collider
First of all, it is needless to point out the striking coincidence: The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiment was launched quite on 10-th of September, while America was commemorating 7 years from the 9-11 terrorist attacks.
Following a logical train of thoughts, it looks like someone out there wanted to distract the attention of the crowds from the 9-11 events, towards the scary machine.
Certainly if this kind of experiment was going to be done for real, it would've been done quietly, not on a populated continent like Europe, but rather deep inside the oceans or at the frozen poles.
Just like the famous American journey on the Moon and the 9-11 "terrorist" demolition of the New York twin towers, the "Large Hadron Collider" (LHC) experiment has been aired "live" on the TV channels of the World.
Quoting from RIA Novosti, what was presented as happening today is just a test prior to the inauguration of the "destructive" machine which might "give rise to a chain reaction that could destroy our planet".
RIA NOVOSTI:
"The collider is to be inaugurated on October 21," said Alexander Vodopyanov, of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (Dubna)."This means at least one test-run of proton beams around the accelerator ring will be conducted prior to inauguration."
http://en.rian.ru/world/20080805/115771418.html
This statement reads that LHC is not just an isolated experiment, but rather a long term project.
But whether or not the Large Hadron Collider device exists physically is just a figure of speech, as long as its sole purpose is a propagandistic one.
Many have long complained about the reckless universal policy, by which climate change is ignored and even encouraged due to the lack of legislation which could help reduce gas emissions.
Others are concerned with the near future of humanity, when fossil fuels will be just good memories.
In order to soothe these concerns, the global political thinkers of the planet haven't considered for a single moment thinking of a concrete program for reducing the waste of the non-renewable fuels, but they opted instead for improving the image of the old-fashioned Bin Laden.
The image of "terror" has therefore been switched from the bearded man with the stick (Bin Laden) to the complicated tubular machinery called "The Large Hadron Collider".
This big step further in the lie fabrication industry proves that the political thinkers of the planet have finally grasped that while almost every person has easy access to relatively high technology such as a mobile phone or a web camera nowadays, the image of the bearded man with the stick who terrorises the whole planet with his bare hands is severely running out of both time and credibility.
Hence, pressed by the public requests to update this scenario, the political scenarists wrote "The Large Hadron Collider" - a novel meant to divert people's attention from the real problems which aren't scheduled being ever solved, but rather disguised and hidden from the public eye.
Due to the freshly launched story of the miraculous device, the shortage of the non-renewable fuels will fall on the second place on common people's list of global concerns, while the blame for the climate change will be switched from the exponential consume of fossil fuels, upon the monstruous device. Never mind the commemoration of the 9-11 victims, date when people will rather "commemorate" the test of the "destructive machine".
The consequences of this alleged "experiment" are indeed unpredictable, but not in the hilarious sense that a black hole will swallow the whole Universe.
The purpose of the LHC story might be just to shadow the 9-11 events and to diminish their importance on each 9-11 September, the top secret device might slowly become the main official blame for the climate change, or it might become a a pretext for actually launching incognito strikes, nuclear or of any other nature.
Although its purpose seems to be rather to distract people's attention from the climate change than to be used as a pretext for launching preemptive strikes, my prediction is that the concept of terrorism will be slowly left aside and, in time, it will be replaced with the "LHC" concept.
=============================================================
UPDATES:
I was apparently wrong separating Bin Laden from the LHC, but the image that I have attached seems to be correct. No, the notion of "terrorists" won't disappear. It will be BIN LADEN who will screw up the LHC and who will cause the "black hole" which will cause in its turn the intensification of the global warming.
The weakness in this terrorist-LHC joint venture is that very few believe in Bin Laden anymore.
If it will cross politicians' mind to say that Bin Laden attacked the LHC, there will be three groups of people:
1. One who believes in Bin Laden and believes also in LHC, who will swallow every lies.
2. One who believes in LHC but doesn't believe in Bin Laden anymore and who will accuse politicians of claiming that LHC is screwed and who will say that it was screwed from the very beginning and that now politicians want to hide this by blaming the unsuccess of the LHC experiment on terrorists.
3. And one who doesn't believe in both Bin Laden and the LHC and who will say that everything was staged from the very beginning, that there's no LHC actually and that everything that is being sold to us as LHC is pure distraction from the realities of this planet such as global warming.
Just look what a silly page they sell us, babbling about computers hacking and such:
ARTICLES:
TELEGRAPH.UK:
Hackers infiltrate Large Hadron Collider systems and mock IT security
Last Updated: 4:01pm BST 12/09/2008
Hackers have mounted an attack on the Large Hadron Collider, raising concerns about the security of the biggest experiment in the world. By Roger Highfield.
As the first particles were circulating in the machine near Geneva where the world wide web was born, a Greek group hacked into the facility, posting a warning about weaknesses in its infrastructure.
Calling themselves the Greek Security Team, the interlopers mocked the IT used on the project, describing the technicians responsible for security as "a bunch of schoolkids."However, despite an ominous warning "don't mess with us," the hackers said they had no intention of disrupting the work of the atom smasher.
"We're pulling your pants down because we don't want to see you running around naked looking to hide yourselves when the panic comes," they wrote in Greek in a rambling note posted on the LHC's network.
The scientists behind the £4.4 billion "Big Bang" machine had already received threatening emails and been besieged by telephone calls from worried members of the public concerned by speculation that the machine could trigger a black hole to swallow the earth, or earthquakes and tsunamis, despite endless reassurances to the contrary from the likes of Prof Stephen Hawking.
The website - http://www.cmsmon.cern.ch/
- can no longer be accessed by the public as a result of the attack.
Scientists working at Cern, the organisation that runs the vast smasher, were worried about what the hackers could do because they were "one step away" from the computer control system of one of the huge detectors of the machine, a vast magnet that weighs 12500 tons, measuring around 21 metres in length and 15 metres wide/high.
If they had hacked into a second computer network, they could have turned off parts of the vast detector and, said the insider, "it is hard enough to make these things work if no one is messing with it."
Fortunately, only one file was damaged but one of the scientists firing off emails as the CMS team fought off the hackers said it was a "scary experience".
The hackers targeted the Compact Muon Solenoid Experiment, or CMS, one of the four "eyes" of the facility that will be analysing the fallout of the Big Bang.
The CMS team of around 2000 scientists is racing with another team that runs the Atlas detector, also at Cern, to find the Higgs particle, one that is responsible for mass.
"There seems to be no harm done. From what they can tell, it was someone making the point that CMS was hackable," said James Gillies, spokesman for Cern. "It was quickly detected."
"We have several levels of network, a general access network and a much tighter network for sensitive things that operate the LHC," said Gillies.
"We are a very visible site," he said, adding that of the 1.4 million emails sent to Cern yesterday, 98 per cent was spam.
The hacking attempt started around the time that the giant machine was about to circulate its first particles, under the spotlight of the world's media.
On Wednesday afternoon, as the world held its breath as the machine sparked up, CMS team members were scouring computers at the machine for half a dozen files uploaded by the hackers on September 9 and 10.
"We think that someone from Fermilab's Tevatron (the competing atom smasher in America) had their access details compromised," said one of the scientists working on the machine. "What happened wasn't a big deal, just goes to show people are out there always on the prowl."
The CMS team studied the files inserted by the hackers carefully before deleting, in case a "backdoor" had been installed, a means of access to the computer that bypasses security.
The system the hackers managed to access was CMSMON, which monitors the CMS software system as the vast detector takes data, during collisions between particles to study the energies and physics in the immediate aftermath of the Big Bang, which created the universe.
Cern relies on a 'defence-in-depth' strategy, separating control networks and using firewalls and complex passwords, to protect its control systems from malicious software, such as denial-of-service attacks, botnets and zombie machines, which can strike with a synchronised attack from hundreds of machines around the world.
However, there have been growing concerns about security as remote or wireless access, notebooks and USB sticks offer new possibilities for a virus or worms to enter the network, not to mention hackers and terrorists who might be interested in targeting computers to shutdown the system.
More than 110 different control systems are used at Cern. These systems monitor, supervise and safeguard Cern's accelerators, experiments and infrastructure - from buildings, electricity and heating to access control, radiation protection and safety.
To refine security methods Cern set up a working group called Computing and Network Infrastructure for Controls. One document written by the group said: "Recent events show that computer security issues are becoming a serious problem also at Cern."
However, the team said yesterday that it did not want to comment on security at the international facility.
A few years ago, Stanford University in California announced that a number of high-performance academic computer centres had been attacked by hackers lured by the phenomenal power of the grid - pools of computing power linked by dedicated high-speed networks.
Beyond shutting down the machines or stealing or deleting data, one likely malicious use of such power is to crack passwords.
In 2003, hackers broke into ScotGrid, a network of 150 machines based at the University of Glasgow. They intercepted the password of a remote user based in Geneva and used it to gain access to ScotGrid. They ran scripts that tried to reconfigure the machine to steal more passwords.
The commissioning of the giant machine is making extraordinary progress.
Now that the team has managed to get beams of particles circulating stably, they must be "captured" so that the particles stay in bunches.
This has now been done with the anticlockwise beam, circulating a beam for full half an hour. Commissioning, said Gillies, "is going incredibly fast."
They now hope to capture the second clockwise beam. "To give you a feel for how well these guys are doing, what happened on Wednesday was days one to four of main commissioning."
This latest step "is really a more significant achievement than Wednesday's fun and games," comments Dr David Sankey of the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Oxfordshire.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/09/12/scicern312.xml&page=3
TIMES ONLINE:
Hackers claim there’s a black hole in the atom smashers’ computer network
September 13, 2008
Hackers have broken into one of the computer networks of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).
A group calling itself the Greek Security Team left a rogue webpage describing the technicians responsible for computer security at the giant atom smasher as “schoolkids” — but reassuring scientists that they did not want to disrupt the experiment.
The hackers gained access to a website open to other scientists on Wednesday as the LHC passed its first test, sending its protons off on their dizzying journey through time and space, close to the speed of light.
The work of the scientists was not derailed and insiders scoffed at claims that the hackers were “one step away” from the systems controlling the experiment itself. The engineering team completed four days of scheduled work in the first 24 hours but what physicists are really waiting for is the big bang machine’s first collisions.
Apart from being wide of the mark from a scientific point of view, fears that the LHC might bring the world to an end this week were in any case premature because it was never going to smash any particles so early on.
This week’s successful start-up means that that should now happen sooner than expected, perhaps as early as the first week in October.
Doomsayers take note: there is still a slim chance that a microscopic (and harmless) black hole will be created, but only once the accelerator starts colliding protons together at close to its maximum energy.
The hackers appear to have targeted the computer system of the Compact Muon Solenoid Experiment, one of the four detectors that will be analysing the progress of the experiment.
James Gillies, a spokesman for CERN, the European Laboratory for Network Collision, home of the LHC, said: “We don’t know who they were but there seems to be no harm done. It appears to be people who want to make a point that CERN was hackable,” he added.
CERN officials are now confident that the collider will have started experiments to generate new physics well before world leaders visit on October 21 to inaugurate the project.
Many countries will send their heads of state or government to the event: President Sarkozy of France, President Couchepin of Switzerland and President Köhler of Germany have the date in their diaries, and either President Medvedev of Russia or Vladimir Putin may attend.
The British Prime Minister, however, has apparently decided to skip the opportunity to be publicly associated with black holes.
Responding to a query about whether Gordon Brown would be there to celebrate the passing of the Apocalypse, Downing Street told The Times “to call back nearer the time”.
Describing the CERN team’s progress, Mr Gillies said: “There is a 31-day schedule before the first high-energy collisions, and on Wednesday they did Days 1 to 4.”
On Wednesday night, one beam was circulated around the LHC’s ring about 300 times, and on Thursday, the anti-clockwise beam was fired around the accelerator for half an hour so it could be “captured” and made to travel in neat, compact pulses.
Protons make about 11,000 laps per second, which means 20 million circuits have been achieved. The next crucial step is likely next week, when the captured beams will be fired in opposite directions, and crashed into each other inside the four huge detectors.
A couple of weeks later is the real moment of truth.
The LHC’s superconducting magnets will be fired up to 70 per cent of maximum power, producing proton beams with an energy of 5 teraelectronvolts (TeV) — 5,000 billion electrovolts — and crashing them together.
“That’s where the new physics starts,” Dr Gillies said. It is possible that scientists will start accumulating the evidence that could prove supersymmetry, the hypothesis that all particles have a twin.
The plan next year is to ramp it up to its maximum energy of 7TeV. The accelerator will then be providing results that should shed light on some of the central questions in physics.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article4744329.ece
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